


the ghosts of regrets long past

by doomteacosy



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 01:55:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18064367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomteacosy/pseuds/doomteacosy
Summary: She is silent now, watching him solemnly from by the window. A spectre, awash in grey and dressed only in her shift with her dark hair loose around her and limned in gold by the morning light.She offers no gentle words, no harsh rebukes. Her hands neither open to welcome him, nor close into unforgiving fists. That they are so still is, in itself, a tragedy, an ache.





	the ghosts of regrets long past

**Author's Note:**

> eyyy what up.... this basically wrote itself last summer, but miranda deserves better than this hot mess of being a silent prop to manpain? but i do still like parts of what i say abt her and him and them. so. :T
> 
> "i kinda hate this, but it's getting posted," the 2019 mood. also "empty out your damn wip folder," the 2019 mood and resolution.
> 
> also "what are titles," the most eternal of all mood.

She is silent now, watching him solemnly from by the window. A spectre, awash in grey and dressed only in her shift with her dark hair loose around her and limned in gold by the morning light.

She offers no gentle words, no harsh rebukes. Her hands neither open to welcome him, nor close into unforgiving fists.

That they are so still is, in itself, a tragedy, an ache. No hands callused by ten years of living alone to brush his hair from his face while she clucks over cuts and bruises. They do not fidget restlessly while she gathers her arguments into a neat little line, nor glide gracefully over the keys of the spinet, nor take his hand in a silent plea for companionship and an end to the years of voluntary exile from life and sanity.

She is so _still_. She just stands, sentry to his guilt. And even in that he knows he has done her wrong. She was not his conscience. Not the counterpoint to Captain Flint, nor some maid in a tale who exists to remind him who he is. She would never abide being flattened and turned into a set piece in his story. He knew that. 

He knew _her_.

And yet...

"I almost wish I had given it up before, when you asked," he says quietly, but she offers no response. "Almost. Not for a pardon, not begging forgiveness. Just... stopped. That plan, in Charlestown, was a mad one. We should have listened when Abigail warned us, found another way. Even if we did not find out the truth about Ashe, we could have...” He pauses, shakes his head. Looks past her out the window into the dawn beyond. 

If, if, if... 

"You should have told me about the bloody clock," he bites out. That clock will haunt him— _does_ haunt him. That ticking that counted toward the hour of her death. This thing that she hid away from him, so desperate to see an end to this. 

It will haunt him that he never recognized it himself. A reminder of how little time he spent in that house. A deafening reminder of the life they lived outside his view—their years of companionship, the life they shared, set in stark contrast to the few moments he had stolen. A life he still knew so little about, because neither her nor Miranda had ever been ready to talk about it at the same time. Even if he ached to know. Even if she ached to remember. How he had resented her for that time she had had in his less charitable moments.

(A reminder, too, of how little attention he paid to anything but Thomas.)

But the clock could not have changed things.

"You were not the only one who tired of it," he says quietly. It seems a weak offering now. So many truths spoken too late. Always too late. 

He looks away from her, down at his own hands. They had always been rough, but his time as Flint has seen to it 

and his time at the plant before the escape had done even worse. A constant reminder of the time that stretched between London and here. Of the things that he had done, that had been done. "If I had waited... if we could have found Thomas sooner... Perhaps there were other ways. Perhaps..."

Perhaps he would not still see her there. Not dream of her body lying cold, her eyes looking blankly into his own. 

Perhaps the real woman would be standing in front of him, scolding him for being maudlin or telling him to take better care of himself, because she wouldn’t do it for him (even if, really, she would). There would be an exasperated smile pulling at her lips, a mix of fondness and something sharp.

Perhaps their memories of Thomas had been polished by time, and had set him on a pedestal, but they were not entirely wrong. He thinks he would never have been Flint if it had been Miranda they lost. Not because it would not have ached—it _does—_ but because he and Miranda were a different creature than he and Thomas. Miranda did not inspire him to rise to lofty ideals, she inspired him to be himself, unashamedly. Even when they disagreed. And so Flint was born, and she stood by him.

(She was _always_ a sharp thing. A contradiction of home and hardness. Love and practicality.)

But if they had regained Thomas... perhaps he would have changed their course.

(Perhaps they could have won their war, though that line of thinking is another dangerous one.)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

There is no point to these contemplations on paths not taken, yet he cannot stop himself from wondering about those futures that never came to be. Perhaps they could have all been happy again. Together. In London, in Naussau, here.

"He's the sun," he says quietly, unable to look at her. Unable to even put into words what Thomas was— _is—_ for him. For both of them. "When the sun turns toward you, it is _blinding_. And when that sun is lost, you are just as blind. I could not turn away from him, and when we lost him..."

When they lost him, James McGraw died. He was buried, piece by piece. First in the house in London, and then on the beach of Nassau, in her harbors and in the sea beyond. In his cabin on the Walrus. Among the trees on Skeleton Island. Captain Flint took him. His first and last victim.

But that was not the tale. That was not the thing he was trying to say. 

"Ten years," he says. Breathes it out like it's a holy thing. A damned thing.

He takes another shaking breath and raises his eyes to her again. Takes in her hair curling down her back in dark waves, framing the dark pools of her eyes.

"I loved you." He casts his eyes down again, as if a shadow can respond. They both knew they loved each other, if not always in the way the other wished, but saying it aloud—even to a shadow—is no less raw. He breathes out. "I just couldn't remember _how_ when it happened."

"And neither could you," he says, because he will not lie to her. Not even to her ghost.

They had both been lost. Adrift in their common sea of grief and anger, but still unable to find each other until the very end. Until it was too late. If he resented her the time she had with Thomas, then so had she resented him for not heeding her warnings. For costing them the thing they both cherished most. She was sharp, and so was he. Too sharp to not sometimes be a thorn to one another in their grief.

But she had _tried_ , when all he had done was attempt to bury his grief in the sea and the fight he decided was his alone.

"Ten years," he croaks out, again. "Ten years we had together, and we could scarcely _look_ at each other. And now all I can think is how the time we did spend together was _wasted_.”

What he would give to hear her laugh again. To play, to scream, to greet him with a stony silence. To see the indulgent, chiding smile that would cross Thomas' face when she said something honest to the point of insult with a innocent smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye.

"I swore I would not regret what I did. I swore I would not forget that I did it for a reason. But... with no victory to show for it... _the cost_. Not just you, but...”

His very soul. But what did it matter when weighed against the things he had done? The people he had killed. The _friends_ he had killed. When he had failed Thomas for so long. When he had failed her. When he had failed to bring them all back together again.

Captain Flint was returned to the sea, but not how it was planned. There were deeds undone and the shell of a man he had occupied did not know how to reconcile the things that weighed on him. Without Flint... there was nothing. James McGraw was dead.

Of course, James McGraw had died before. Over and over again. With Thomas, with her, with each dark deed he did in the name of revenge. Of a better world that did not come. And yet somehow he was still here to feel raw scrape of guilt along his nerves.

A _waste_.

"I'm sorry," he says finally. 

"James," comes the voice from behind him.

Thomas comes around him and takes the bottle out of his hand. He watches him, eyebrows drawn together and something inscrutable in his face. 

He does not know how long Thomas had stood there, does not _want_ to know. 

Lips press to his brow, rough hands clasp his neck. It is harder to look at him when she is here. A ghost between them. The irony is not lost on him. But Thomas is not Miranda, and James will not make the same mistake twice. 

He leans his head forward into his shoulder for a long moment, until Thomas pulls back, concern writ large on his face, and James lets himself meet him eye to eye.

The shadows are just shadows again, her spectre returned to the place in his heart where dark things slept. 


End file.
